Chapter 3 – Family Chains
1181 Words
THE MOMENT Jeremiah’s bike growled to a stop inside the compound gates, Lily felt the weight of a thousand ghosts press down on her. The place hadn’t changed. Even with strands of muted holiday lights hanging from the fence and a faint pine scent drifting from somewhere inside the house, the compound still carried the same aura of old blood and engine oil. Christmas decor didn’t soften anything here; it only made the sharp edges look sharper.
And then she saw him.
Ronan. Her tyrant brother.
“Look what devil dragged back.”
Ronan’s shoulders were rigid, jaw cut from the same merciless steel their father once carried. His dark hair was trimmed shorter than before, almost military neat, but his eyes—those storm-grey Brook eyes—burned with barely contained fury.
“Lily.” His voice was low. Lethal. The kind that made grown men reevaluate their life choices.
She slid off Jeremiah’s bike, legs trembling from more than just the ride back. Her hair was still wild from the wind, her dress still carrying traces of Robert’s cologne and the sour sting of betrayal. For a heartbeat, she wanted to turn around—run back down the road, back into anonymity, back to any life that wasn’t tied to this place. But Ronan’s stare pinned her in place like a butterfly to a board.
He started down the steps. “What the f**k were you thinking bringing her here?” he snapped—not at Lily, but at Jeremiah.
Jeremiah didn’t flinch. He never did. He stood tall beside his bike, one gloved hand still on the handlebars, eyes fixed on Ronan with that quiet defiance that had once gotten him nearly beaten to death by Lily’s father. “She was walking into traffic, Ronan. Would you rather I leave her there to die?”
“I wasn’t walking into traffic,” Lily muttered sharply.
Jeremiah’s jaw ticked, but he didn’t look her way. “Close enough.”
Ronan’s gaze sliced back to her, narrowing like a blade. “You should never have left in the first place.”
Heat flared in her chest—anger, hurt, the old Brook fire roaring back to life.
“Excuse me?”
“You think running off with Hale was going to save you? You think leaving your blood meant you could cut yourself clean? You don’t get to run from being a Brook, Lily. That’s not how it works.”
She laughed—sharp, brittle, nothing like the composed tones she used in Robert’s world. “Oh, right. Should I have stayed and rotted here instead? Become another broken piece in the aftermath of Father’s funeral? Watched you drown everyone in vengeance and pretend we still resembled a family?”
The words hung in the cold winter air like shards of blown glass. A distant carol drifted faintly from a neighboring house, too soft to matter, too ironic to ignore.
Ronan flinched—barely—but she saw it. The mention of their father still carved wounds that never fully healed.
A memory clawed its way forward.
Sixteen-year-old Lily standing in freezing rain, watching the coffin lower into the earth. Ronan had stood beside her with fists so tight his knuckles bled. Their mother was already gone by then—emotionally first, physically later—unable to face the violence that followed the collapse of the Brook empire. That winter had marked the end of childhood. The end of safety. The end of any illusion that the Brooks could be anything other than cursed.
Lily blinked hard and dragged herself back into the present. “This place kills everything it touches,” she whispered, unwavering. “I wasn’t going to be next.”
Ronan’s jaw flexed. “You left us to clean up the mess.”
“You chained everyone to this place and called it loyalty,” she shot back.
“Enough.” Jeremiah’s voice cut through the storm like a blade.
Lily turned, ready to slice him with her frustration too—but his hand landed on her waist.
Just a touch. Barely a breath of pressure.
But it hit her like a jolt to the spine. His palm was warm despite the winter air, calloused fingers grounding her through silk and skin. It wasn’t intimate exactly—more protective, steady—but her body reacted before she could stop it.
Her pulse jumped. Her breath caught. She leaned slightly into him, hating herself for the instinct.
Jeremiah’s eyes met hers briefly—dark, unreadable, steady. For that blink of a moment, the chaos in her chest settled.
She tore herself away, furious at the betrayal of her own body.
Ronan’s nostrils flared. His fury simmered just beneath the surface. “You shouldn’t have brought her here.”
“She’s safer here than out there,” Jeremiah said plainly. “Safer with us than with him.”
Robert.
Lily felt bile sting her throat. Ronan noticed immediately. His eyes sharpened.
“What did he do?”
Her voice caught, the shame a bitter knot she couldn’t untangle. Admitting it made it real. Admitting it meant owning how deeply she had misjudged the man she thought would save her.
Jeremiah answered, voice rough as gravel. “The bastard slept with another woman.”
Ronan’s expression darkened into something lethal. “I’ll kill him.”
“No.” Lily stepped forward, the word slicing the air. “You don’t get to make that decision. You don’t get to treat me like property being passed between men. I made the mistake. I’ll deal with it.”
“You’re my sister,” Ronan growled. “That makes you my responsibility.”
She laughed again, bitter as winter wind. “Funny. I don’t remember naming you my jailer.”
They squared off—storm against storm, old wounds sparking like dry tinder.
And then the gates clanged.
A prospect sprinted across the yard, boots kicking up frost, breath fogging in the cold. “Boss—news,” he panted. “Hale was spotted. And he’s not alone. Cassian Dredge was with him.”
The yard fell silent.
Even the soft hum of the holiday lights seemed to cut out.
Jeremiah’s shoulders stiffened. His hand flexed, instinctively reaching for where his gun usually rested.
Lily’s blood iced.
Cassian.
The vulture who’d circled the Brook family for years, waiting for any sign of weakness. If Robert was with him, then her humiliation wasn’t just emotional—it was strategic. It was war.
Ronan’s fury sharpened into something deadly. “Of course,” he hissed. “That f*****g snake.”
Lily’s hands trembled despite her effort to hide it. Robert hadn’t just walked away from her. He had handed her humiliation to their enemy like ammunition.
For the first time since she’d stormed out of his bed, she understood just how catastrophic her mistake might be.
Jeremiah’s gaze locked with hers from across the yard. Dark. Steady. Unreadable. But in the quiet between them, she heard the words he didn’t speak.
This is only the beginning.
- Writer
